Interview with Mark Billingham
by Jon Jordan

Jon:  What can you tell us about your first book? Is it the start of a series?

Mark:  Yes it is. SLEEPYHEAD is the first in a series of books featuring Detective Inspector Tom Thorne and a cast of supporting characters! In this first novel, Thorne is on the trail of a man who deliberately induces strokes in his victims and has left three women dead and a fourth in a coma. The police think that in leaving this woman alive, the killer has made his first mistake. The horrifying discovery Thorne makes early on is that it is the dead women that are the killer’s mistakes. The fourth victim, Alison Willetts is his one success. Alison lies in a hospital bed suffering from a hideous condition called “locked-in syndrome“. She can see, hear, feel but she is completely and utterly unable to move. Thorne is hunting a man who for
reasons he cannot fathom has a unique agenda - to leave his victims at the mercy of machines, neither alive nor dead but somewhere in between. Thorne has got to find the killer before he “succeeds” again and Alison, the one person who holds the key to his identity, is unable to tell anyone.

Jon:  You have also written for television right? What kind of stuff did you write for tv?

Mark:  Oddly, (considering the dark stuff in the books), I used to write a lot of children’s comedy and drama. I began writing as part of the creative team behind a show called “Maid Marian And Her Merry Men” which I was also in. It was a comic version of the Robin Hood story created by a great writer called Tony Robinson who you may know as Baldrick from “Blackadder“. Since then I’ve written both my own shows and as part of a team on other peoples shows for the BBC. I think writing comedy for kids is hard. They’re so much more picky about what they laugh about. I truly believe that it’s actually tougher to get an honest to goodness laugh out of a twelve year old than it is to get one from a drunk at half past Midnight at the Comedy Store. Plus, the kids are rarely bigger than me and they don’t throw glasses...

Jon:  As a new author, what is your take on the whole publishing industry? Was it hard to get the first book published? Is there anything about that surprised you?

Mark:  The publishing business in the UK seems to be quite an old-fashioned one in many ways. Deals are made on trust and a certain level of professional etiquette tends to be observed. It may be the same in the US but I was astonished that when various publishers were bidding for SLEEPYHEAD, they never checked the figures in the auction that they were being given by my agent, and at no time do they know who they are bidding against. It’s all done on trust and I think that’s amazing and very refreshing. I think I got very lucky in terms of getting the book published. I’d written about one third of it when it got sent to publishers and I suppose the manuscript landed on the right desks at the right time. It jumped through the necessary hoops quite quickly and the publisher did a phenomenal job in helping get the book into the top ten bestsellers here. I’m still hugely excited about the whole process and having gone through the euphoria of publication and so on in the UK, I’m now gearing up for the huge thrill of publication in the US which is one book behind. I find the whole process of checking proofs, looking at jacket designs, all of it, immensely exciting. Maybe I won’t in a few years time but at the moment I’m still pinching myself...

Jon:  What other jobs have you had?

Mark:  I’m also a stand-up comic and I was a jobbing actor so it would be true to say that I’ve never done a proper day’s work in my life. Hang on, I did work as a cleaner at a holiday camp one Summer just before I went to University but I got scared after a few weeks and came home. I was working on the night shift with some very rough characters. One guy was a punk rocker who was trying to look like Sid Vicious from the Sex Pistols. He worked in the kitchens, and every day after he’d unloaded the meat he would put handfuls of fresh blood from the meat trays into his hair to get just the right amount of spikyness. He also had a padlock on a chain around his neck. It was a nice image but unfortunately he’d lost the key and his neck was turning green. These were scary people. These were the sort of people who because I had stayed at school beyond the age of fourteen, called me “professorâ€?...

Jon:  Does Thorne have any of you in him?

Mark:  Well, he’s around the same age and he likes a little of the same music but aside from that, not really. He’s definitely shorter than me! Sometimes, if the character is musing about the state of London - the public transport, the health service, whatever, he may voice an opinion or two that I happen to share, but I don’t see the point in just putting yourself on the page. It’s fiction, not autobiography. I certainly have a much different life from Tom Thorne in domestic terms. Thorne is, to say the least unsettled, but that of course goes with the territory. Cops have unhappy love lives and dark pasts in the same way that cowboys have six guns and Stetsons. It goes with the territory. I’m sure there are detectives who have perfectly blissful private lives and go home to their families every night and drink hot chocolate and watch television. I’m just not interested in reading about those characters and certainly not in writing about them.

Jon:  Do your friends read this book and wonder about all this dark twisted stuff in your head?

Mark:  Yes, there was a certain amount of that, a few odd looks. I think we all have dark, twisted stuff in our heads and, cliche as it is, it’s probably therapeutic to get it out of there and into the heads of other people.

Jon:  What authors do you like to read?

Mark:  Most of my favourite writers are American. We have some great crime writers in the UK, writers I admire hugely - Rankin, Macdermid, John Connolly but the ones I salivate over are definitely American. Michael Connelly, James Lee Burke , Daniel Woodrell (who should be far bigger than he is). I am a massive fan of Dennis Lehane. We now share an editor in the US which is a huge thrill for me. She kindly sent me an ARC of “Mystic River” as I was writing my second book and it was so outrageously good that I couldn’t write anything for a month! My very favourite writer is George P Pelecanos, whose novels have elegance, grace and integrity dripping from them. His DC Quartet is as fine a piece of writing as anything in the last fifty years and his next book, “Hell To Pay” is truly, truly a masterpiece I think.

Jon:  Was there anyone along the way that inspired you to write, or to just keep trying to do what you wanted to do?

Mark:  I was inspired to write simply from reading, and all of the people I've mentioned inspired me and continue to do so. The day that I stop reading stuff so great that it makes me want to give up, is the day I will give up.

Jon:  Are you going to continue to write for television?

Mark:  I haven’t really decided. There is other stuff I am still doing, TV work, comedy, the screenplay for an Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical ??!! But increasingly it all feels like an interruption from writing the books which is where my heart is at the moment.

Jon:  There are actually other crime fiction writers who also did stand up comedy. John Ridley also started out doing stand up, and then moved to writing for television. Do you think a certain amount of humor is important to being able to do this kind of writing?

Mark:  Yes, I think humour is pretty crucial in any kind of writing and yes, strangely, the darker the subject matter the more this tends to be true. What is certainly true, and rather odd, is that writing crime fiction and performing comedy both use many of the same techniques. First off, a strong opening is important. That first gag has got to be a cracker if the crowd is to trust you and to relax into your material. Ditto the readers of your book. Most have not got time to give a novel the “benefit of the doubt” or to “persevere” if it doesn’t grab them straight away. If the audience/reader is to be engaged, it needs to be done pretty bloody quickly. Whether in a sweaty, smoky club or nestled in a favourite armchair, good money has been paid and the attention has got to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck if you are not to be heckled off the stage or find your novel discarded in favour of another. The same applies to the climax of your act/novel. The big finish is all important. Whether your loose ends are to be tied up or left dangling, whether you leave the audience on a shaggy dog story or a song, a bang is always preferable to a whimper. The most striking similarity between writing comedy and crime fiction is the use of what comics call the reveal. In joke terms, this is the moment when it becomes clear that you have been led down one path only for the punchline to come rushing up the other and smack you in the face.

My grandfather died last week. (Audience goes “aaahhh“) No, it’s OK. He died very peacefully, just sitting there in his chair. He went very quietly. Unlike the passengers on his bus... Crime or mystery fiction uses reveals like this all the time. The writer chooses the most effective or dramatic moment to reveal key information. This is often a clue, though the biggest reveal of all of course, is usually the identity of a killer. In the case of whodunnits, it might be said that the whole book is one extended pull back and reveal. I enjoy writing for both these mediums. If either were to cease being enjoyable I should stop doing it but right now that seems unlikely. For the present I get the best of both worlds. Death, blood and terror. And then there’s the crime writing...

Jon:  Where would you like to see yourself in ten years time?

Mark:  Reflected in the silver of the World Cup trophy, which I am holding aloft, accepting the plaudits of 100,000 fans, having been called up (at a somewhat advanced age its true) to play football for England, and captaining them to victory in the final against Germany. Or...just happy and healthy, coping with two teenage kids and with a dozen well-thought-of novels under my belt.

Jon:  When you write, do you need solitude, or does having a family close to you make it easier?

Mark:  Having a young family around certainly makes it impossible to get too “up oneself“. Of course solitude is necessary for the actual fingers on keyboard stuff, but I often get my best ideas or visualize the most affecting images while doing the most humdrum family things. It would be strange but true to say that some of the nastier moments in SLEEPYHEAD had their birth in the car, on the school run with “The Wheels On The Bus” on the cassette player.

Jon:  I guess this is an obvious question, but I’m going to ask anyway. Were you a class clown in school?

Mark:  Yes, I was the class clown. However, I was also the class bully. If people didn’t laugh at my jokes I would poke them with something sharp...

Jon:  In the book the media is portrayed kind of like sharks circling a body in the water. Do the papers in the UK tend to sensationalize crime to sell papers?

Mark:  Yes, they do, but no more than anywhere else I don’t suppose. What has become quite repulsive here is the way the media has whipped up quite natural feelings of disgust and repulsion towards pedophiles into something approaching mob rule. A certain ghoulish “shrine” mentality has grown up here that can be traced back to the death of Princess Diana I think. People will travel the length of the country to lay a bunch of flowers at the side of the road where a child they did not know has disappeared. The media feeds this kind of frenzy, taking advantage of the natural compassion in people until it becomes something ugly. Rumours are fed by the media and flames of bigotry and ignorance are fanned to the point where justice is no longer possible. There was an incident here recently where a woman was hounded out of her home because of a sign on her door that told people what she did for a living. She was a pediatrician. She looked after children! PAED... was however enough for some people, and she was forced to flee after violence. You couldn’t make that sort of dark, dark tragic-comedy up...

Jon:  Did you have to do any research for the book? And if so, what kind?

Mark:  I had to do a fair amount of medical research for SLEEPYHEAD, for which I am eternally grateful to one, hugely creative doctor friend and the crime writer’s very best friend - the internet. Ditto with police procedure, I did enough research to get the basics right. That’s all I’m interested in really. As long as there aren’t any glaring errors I’m happy. I know
(because I am one) how picky crime readers are about mistakes so I will take every step necessary to avoid them. Crime writers owe it to readers not to insult their intelligence but they should also honour their imagination. I’m writing fiction and not documentary so I want to take the facts and use them to my own dark and dastardly ends so as, hopefully, to entertain the people that read the books.

Jon:  Was the title, Sleepyhead, your idea?

Mark:  Yes, and it was a title I came up with very early on. The word itself is highly significant polities as well as being appropriate for a story which in many ways is about a woman who is permanently trapped somewhere between being asleep and awake. The word also has a childlike, innocent quality to it which, in the context of the book becomes something altogether spookier and far from reassuring.

Jon:  Minette Walters once said that she sees her books as a chance to play a game with her readers. To see if they can pick up the clues and figure out the ending before they get there. What is your take on this? Do you give the reader a fair chance to figure it out, or do you want them to buckle up and enjoy the ride?

Mark:  Both. I want the ride to be enjoyable certainly but it isn’t one that’s dependent on clues or puzzles. I think (I wait to be corrected!) that a lot of US crime readers have a perception that British writers specialize in these books which stand or fall on solving elaborate puzzles. Some do of course but an increasing number of writers here are creating stuff that is character driven, that comes from a concern for certain issues and I would certainly place myself in this camp. Of course I want the reader to be enthralled until the very end and there is of course the big reveal which I have given them, I think, every chance to figure out, but this is not solely what the book is about.

Jon:  It seems that a lot of British writers are starting to catch on in the states. Do you think it’s important for the books to do well outside of the UK?

Mark:  I think my agent thinks it’s important! Yes, I certainly hope that the books do OK. I am an enormous Americophile (I may have invented that word). the genre of crime fiction I like was invented over there and so, for my books to be well thought of by US crime readers would be fantastic. It’s such an enormous market over there that I think it is quite hard. It’s tough enough for any number of brilliant American writers to get a foothold in the States so I am thrilled to have even got a deal over there. Anything else will be a huge bonus. And of course a good excuse to come to Bouchercon!


Jon:  I believe that Death on Deansgate was your first convention as a writer. What was it like to interact with the other authors as one of them?

Mark:  It was great. I’d actually done some panels at this year’s Crimescene at the National Film Theatre but Deansgate was my first real chance to hang out with some of these writers. Crime writers generally seem a pretty nice crowd - far less bitchy than other groups I’ve spent time among (notably actors and comedians!!) and very welcoming of new blood. It was great to meet some writers for the first time - John Harvey, Steve Booth and a real treat to get to know George Pelecanos, who I had the honour of interviewing on stage for the convention. He was hugely supportive of my book and very generous. Even though everyone was there to hear him talk about his work I had to keep working very hard to stop him steering the conversation round to mine! That’s an absence of ego that you would never encounter among actors or comedians...

Jon:  Any thoughts on why UK television does mystery and crime stuff so much better than it’s done in the US?

Mark:  I don’t think it does do it better, it just does it differently. We do those languorous, rather elegiac treatments of stuff like Morse or Frost or Dalziell & Pascoe very well and in recent years, series like Cracker have developed more of an edge. I don’t think any of these shows though can hold a candle to US shows like Homicide or NYPD Blue or The Sopranos or Oz. Like I said earlier, I’m an Americophile. Perhaps we are all drawn to...otherness.

Jon:  What are some of your favorite movies?

Mark:  Oh, all sorts of stuff. I’m a huge movie fan. Comedy wise it doesn’t get funnier than “Manhattan” or “Spinal Tap” and I’ve a soft spot for everything from the Ealing comedies to the best of the Carry On series. I love stuff ranging from epics like the Godfather series through to beautifully made self-contained crime stories like “The Usual Suspects” and “One False Move“. My top ten, which of course changes all the time, would feature everything from “Blood Simple” to “Its A Wonderful Life“.

Jon:  And ...what kind of music do you like?

Mark:  Like I said, I share some musical passions with Tom Thorne - notably his love of (proper) country music. Cash, Haggard, Williams, Parsons, Earle. Aside from that I’m pretty retro I suppose, still into the singers and bands that I was a fan of at eighteen. The Clash, the Jam, XTC and above all the mighty Elvis Costello, the finest singer-songwriter of his generation. Always easier of course to say what you don’t like - folk music, hip-hop and it goes without saying all boy-bands, who should be tortured live on national television.

Jon:  Do you have another book in the works now? Can you tell us about it?

Mark:  I’m actually working on the third Thorne novel at the moment. The second one is finished and delivered. It’s called SCAREDY CAT and will be published here next July, at the same time that SLEEPYHEAD is published in the US. In SCAREDY CAT, Thorne is investigating a series of killings whose origin dates back to a school playground and the disappearance of a young girl fifteen years before. The book is about is about the nature of fear. How certain individuals can be manipulated by it into the most terrible acts. How those that have the ability, and the lack of conscience to inspire it possess the most powerful weapon there is.

Jon:  Are you going to be setting up a website?

Mark:  I already have one, though I am about to have it shut down and redesigned. It was set up a while ago, before I got a book deal and so is there solely as a publicity tool for my career as a comic. It is therefore very silly and somewhat rude and not representative, as it should be, of my new found and very very sombre and arty persona as an (ahem) serious writer...

Jon:  What is the one thing that’s always in your refrigerator?

Mark:  An electrically powered refrigeration system. If not for this, my refrigerator would just be a big, shiny, white cupboard.